Lenovo's Smartphone Future: Vibe, ZUK, Moto

Today, Lenovo made the ZUK brand international. Back on August 11th, they announced the ZUK Z1 in Beijing. This was the Chinese version that is running their own OS known as ZUI. I actually have one here and it's been working pretty nice. Nothing to fancy, but not bad either. It just works. Now today, they are announcing the international version, which is a partnership with Cyanogen OS – and the code will be open sourced next month. You can read more about that smartphone here

We had a chance to sit down with Lenovo and their partner Elephone (a bit strange choice there), and talk about what this means for Lenovo in the future. As most of you know, Lenovo already has the Motorola and Vibe brands. So the way that Lenovo is positioning the ZUK branding is in the mid-range, but international. So you have your Motorola smartphones as the high-end contenders, and the ZUK smartphones in the middle. With Vibe coming in at the low-end, and possibly even being rebranded. However the rebranding part is all speculation right now.

Advertisement

While ZUK started out as a domestic product for Lenovo, its now going international thanks to their partnership with Cyanogen. Currently the Z1 is only supporting bands in Europe and Asia, however they have assured us that a model support the bands in the Americas will be coming soon. Lenovo used to be the number one export smartphone manufacturer in China. Meaning they sold the most phones outside of China, of the Chinese OEMs. They've now slipped down to number three. Still a pretty decent stand, considering how many competitors are around. But they want that number one spot back, and I can't blame them there. With the ZUK line, they might just do that. For just $280, the ZUK Z1 is one heck of a smartphone. Including some of the latest tech like the USB Type C connector, Snapdragon 801, 3GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and a massive 4100mAh battery inside.

We're still here in Shenzhen talking with ZUK, Lenovo, Elephone and Cyanogen. So there will be plenty of content coming up about this new smartphone as well as partnership. So make sure you keep it locked to Android Headlines for all of the details!